Sunday, February 26, 2017



Do as I say, not as I do (1)

The Left love preaching civilized behaviour even while they behave in the most offensive manner possible. The election of Trump has seen them sink to the very depths of offensive words and behaviour.  So what has Amnesty International got to say about that behavior?  Crickets.  They criticize Mr. Trump only.

There is no doubt that Mr Trump's policies have tended to make Muslims and Hispanics feel unwelcome but that is just a reflection of the fact that Muslims and Hispanics have made themselves unwelcome by their egregious behaviour. If Amnesty wants to seen as more than a Leftist propaganda mouthpiece they will have to start looking at both sides of the matter


The Left-leaning Amnesty International has accused President Trump and other “anti-establishment” politicians of “wield[ing] politics of demonization that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanizes entire groups of people to win the support of voters.”

“Donald Trump’s poisonous campaign rhetoric exemplifies a global trend towards angrier and more divisive politics,” Amnesty International said in a new annual report covering 159 countries and territories.

“Across the world, leaders and politicians wagered their future power on narratives of fear and disunity, pinning blame on the ‘other’ for the real or manufactured grievances of the electorate,” it added.

The group offered a gloomy outlook on the state of the world.

“The world in 2016 became a darker and more unstable place,” Amnesty International secretary-general Salil Shetty wrote in the report’s foreword. “The reality is that we begin 2017 in a deeply unstable world full of trepidation and uncertainty about the future.”

In a statement, Shetty named Trump, Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the provocatively outspoken Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and Hungary’s right wing prime minister Viktor Orban as politicians who he said demonize and dehumanize entire groups.

“2016 was the year when the cynical use of ‘us vs. them’ narratives of blame, hate and fear took on a global prominence to a level not seen since the 1930s,” he said. That was the decade the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, leading to World War II.

“Too many politicians are answering legitimate economic and security fears with a poisonous and divisive manipulation of identity politics in an attempt to win votes,” added Shetty, an Indian activist who has headed the organization since 2010.

Amnesty International USA executive director Margaret Huang also weighed in, saying that “President Trump’s policies have brought the U.S. to a level of human rights crisis that we haven’t seen in years.”

“As the world braces itself for a new executive order, thousands of people inside and outside of U.S. borders have had their lives thrown into chaos as a result of the president’s travel ban,” she added.

The reference was to Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order, which barred entry to the U.S. of all refugees for 120 days and refugees from Syria indefinitely; as well as to all citizens of seven countries carrying a high terrorism risk – Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen – for 90 days.

Amid protests, federal courts issued temporary stays on enforcement of the order. The administration is preparing to issue what Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly described as a “more streamlined version.”

SOURCE

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Do as I say, not as I do (2)

Further to my comments above, see below a clipping from the Washington Post of Feb. 1st.  It's from an editorial headed "Breaking the unwritten rules of governing" and criticizes Mr Trump's firing of Sally Yates -- an Obama relic heading the Justice Department -- when she refused to do her job.  What was he supposed to say other than "You're fired"?  Once again the Leftist rag is preaching the highest standards of civilized behavior -- oblivious that the Left themselves constantly do the opposite.  They have the brass to say that we should not demonize political opponents.  So "Trump = Hitler" and all the rest is wrong?  It certainly is but the Post does not mention that.

I have not made any attempt to do a search of their own articles but I note that in yesterday's issue they had an article written by an Obamabot which was headed "The White House’s thoughtless, cruel and sad rollback of transgender rights".  That's a pretty good effort at demonization  -- particularly because Trump didn't roll back anything.  He just reverted the matter to the States, who may or may not do something about it.

Ethics, morality, principles and decency are all alien to the left.  They just haven't got it in them.  Their only constancy is their hatred of others.



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Two leading Swedish politicians say Trump was right about their country's problem with refugee-fueled crime

While President Donald Trump was ridiculed last week for suggesting there was a terrorist attack in Sweden, two nationalist politicians from the Scandinavian country are coming to his defense.

Per Jimmie Akesson and Mattias Karlsson, two members of parliament from the right-wing Sweden Democrats, backed Trump's characterization of Sweden as a country that is plagued by migrant-fueled crime.

Akesson and Karlsson co-wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

'Mr. Trump did not exaggerate Sweden's current problems,' Akesson and Karlsson wrote. 'If anything, he understated them.'

During a rally in front of supporters in Florida last week, Trump said Sweden was 'having problems like they never thought possible.'

Police were forced to fire warning shots after a group of rioters began setting fire to cars, throwing stones at police and looting shops in the Rinkeby district of Stockholm on Monday night.

A police officer was injured during the clashes, Swedish public service broadcaster SVT reported.

Initially, Trump was thought to be talking about terrorism in Sweden, but the president later tweeted that he was referring to a Fox News segment about crime committed by migrants from the Middle East.

'Riots and social unrest have become a part of everyday life,' Akesson and Karlsson wrote.  'Police officers, firefighters and ambulance personnel are regularly attacked. Serious riots in 2013, involving many suburbs with large immigrant populations, lasted for almost a week.' 'Gang violence is booming.'

'Despite very strict firearms laws, gun violence is five times as common in Sweden, in total, as in the capital cities of our three Nordic neighbors combined.'

The two politicians also wrote in their op-ed that the Jews of Sweden who had once lived in the city of Malmo have fled because of the large immigrant population there.

'Anti-Semitism has risen,' they wrote. 'Jews in Malmo are threatened, harassed and assaulted in the streets.' 'Many have left the city, becoming internal refugees in their country of birth.'

'For the sake of the American people, with whom we share so many strong historical and cultural ties, we can only hope that the leaders in Washington won't make the same mistakes that our socialist and liberal politicians did,' they wrote.

But a Swedish government minister from the ruling Social Democrats blasted Akesson and Karlsson, accusing them of lying in the op-ed.

SOURCE

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Bannon Hails 'Deconstruction of the Administrative State'

People should be ruled by their elected representatives, not bureaucrats

Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon were asked to name a few of the "most critical" things that have happened in the first month of the Trump presidency.

Priebus pointed to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court; deregulation; and Trump's executive orders on immigration.

Bannon, speaking generally, mentioned national security, economic nationalism, and "deconstruction of the administrative state," a phrase that made headlines:

I think if you look at the lines of work, I kind of break it up into three verticals of three buckets. The first is kind of national security and sovereignty and that's your intelligence, the Defense Department, Homeland Security.

The second line of work is what I refer to as economic nationalism and that is Wilbur Ross at Commerce, Steven Mnuchin at Treasury, Lighthizer at -- at Trade, Peter Navarro, Stephen Miller, these people that are rethinking how we're gonna reconstruct the -- our trade arrangements around the world.

The third, broadly, line of work is what is deconstruction of the administrative state.

More specifically, Bannon listed three of the "most important things" as Trump's immediate withdrawal from TPP; the immigration guidance issued by Homeland Security Secretary Jack Kelly this week; and deregulation:

"Every business leader we've had in is saying not just taxes, but it is -- it is also the regulation. I think the consistent, if you look at these Cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason, and that is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs, is if they can't get it passed, they're just gonna put in some sort of regulation in -- in an agency.

"That's all gonna be deconstructed and I think that that's why this regulatory thing is so important."

Bannon said President Trump is "maniacally focused' on fulfilling the promises he made during the campaign, even if the "mainstream media" won't report that:

"Just like they were dead wrong on the chaos of the campaign; and just like they were dead wrong in the chaos of the transition, they are absolutely dead wrong about what's going on today because we have a team that's just grinding it through on what President Donald Trump promised the American people.

"And the mainstream media better understand something, all of those promises are going to be implemented."

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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